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Title: Derrick Vaughan--Novelist
Author: Edna Lyall
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DERRICK VAUGHAN--NOVELIST ***
Produced by Les Bowler, and David Widger
DERRICK VAUGHAN—NOVELIST
By Edna Lyall
‘It is only through deep sympathy that a man can become a great artist.’—Lewes’s
Life of Goethe.
‘Sympathy is feeling related to an object, whilst sentiment is the same feeling seeking
itself alone.’—Arnold Toynbee.
Contents
Chapter I.
Chapter II.
Chapter III.
Chapter IV.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
Chapter
VII.
Chapter
VIII.
Chapter IX.
Chapter I.
‘Nothing fills a child’s mind like a large old mansion; better if un- or partially occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased
members of the county and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at seven
years old!’—From Letters of Charles Lamb.
To attempt a formal biography of Derrick Vaughan would be out of the question, even though he and I have been more or less
thrown together since we were both in the nursery. But I have an odd sort of wish to note down roughly just a few of my recollections
of him, and to show how his fortunes gradually developed, being perhaps stimulated to make the attempt by certain irritating remarks
which one overhears now often enough at clubs or in drawing-rooms, or indeed wherever one goes. “Derrick Vaughan,” say these
authorities of the world of small-talk, with that delightful air of omniscience which invariably characterises them, “why, he simply leapt
into fame. He is one of the favourites of fortune. Like Byron, he woke one morning and found himself famous.”
Now this sounds well enough, but it is a long way from the truth, and I—Sydney Wharncliffe, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law
—desire, while the past few years are fresh in my mind, to write a true version of my friend’s career.
Everyone knows his face. Has it not appeared in ‘Noted Men,’ and—gradually deteriorating according to the price of the paper
and the quality of the engraving—in many another illustrated journal? Yet somehow these works of art don’t satisfy me, and, as I write,
I see before me something very different from the latest photograph by Messrs. Paul and Reynard.
I see a large-featured, broad-browed English face, a trifle heavy-looking when in repose, yet a thorough, honest, manly face, with a
complexion neither dark nor fair, with brown hair and moustache, and with light hazel eyes that look out on the world quietly enough.
You might talk to him for long in an ordinary way and never suspect that he was a genius; but when you have him to yourself, when
some consciousness of sympathy rouses him, he all at once becomes a different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of
life—you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace. Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab
draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick suddenly retires into himself.
Thus much for his outer man.
For the rest, there are of course the neat little accounts of his birthplace, his parentage, his education, etc., etc., published with the
list of his works in due order, with the engravings in the illustrated papers. But these tell us little of the real life of the man.
Carlyle, in one of his finest passages, says that ‘A true delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage through life is
capable of interesting the greatest men; that all men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man’s life a strange emblem of every
man’s; and that human portraits faithfully drawn are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls.’ And though I don’t profess to give a
portrait, but merely a sketch, I will endeavour to sketch faithfully, and possibly in the future my work may fall into the hands of some of
those worthy people who imagine that my friend leapt into fame at a bound, or of those comfortable mortals who seem to think that a
novel is turned out as easily as water from a tap.
There is, however, one thing I can never do:—I am quite unable to put into words my friend’s intensely strong feeling with regard to
the sacredness of his profession. It seemed to me not unlike the feeling of Isaiah when, in the vision, his mouth had been touched with
the celestial fire. And I can only hope that something of this may be read between my very inadequate lines.
Looking back, I fancy Derrick must have been a clever child. But he was not precocious, and in some respects was even decidedly
backward. I can see him now—it is my first clear recollection of him—leaning back in the corner of my father’s carriage as we drove
from the Newmarket station to our summer home at Mondisfield. He and I were small boys of eight, and Derrick had been invited for
the holidays, while his twin brother—if I remember right—indulged in typhoid fever at Kensington. He was shy and silent, and the ice
was not broken until we passed Silvery Steeple.
“That,” said my father, “is a ruined church; it was destroyed by Cromwell in the Civil Wars.”
In an instant the small quiet boy sitting beside me was transformed. His eyes shone; he sprang forward and thrust his head far out of
the window, gazing at the old ivy-covered tower as long as it remained in sight.
“Was Cromwell really once there?” he asked with breathless interest.
“So they say,” replied my father, looking with an amused smile at the face of the questioner, in which eagerness, delight, and
reverence were mingled. “Are you an admirer of the Lord Protector?”
“He is my greatest hero of all,” said Derrick fervently. “Do you think—oh, do you think he possibly can ever have come to
Mondisfield?”
My father thought not, but said there was an old tradition that the Hall had been attacked by the Royalists, and the bridge over the
moat defended by the owner of the house; but he had no great belief in the story, for which, indeed, there seemed no evidence.
Derrick’s eyes during this conversation were something wonderful to see, and long after, when we were not actually playing at
anything, I used often to notice the same expression stealing over him, and would cry out, “There is the man defending the bridge again;
I can see him in your eyes! Tell me what happened to him next!”
Then, generally pacing to and fro in the apple walk, or sitting astride the bridge itself, Derrick would tell me of the adventures of my
ancestor, Paul Wharncliffe, who performed incredible feats of valour, and who was to both of us a most real person. On wet days he
wrote his story in a copy-book, and would have worked at it for hours had my mother allowed him, though of the manual part of the
work he had, and has always retained, the greatest dislike. I remember well the comical ending of this first story of his. He skipped
over an interval of ten years, represented on the page by ten laboriously made stars, and did for his hero in the following lines:
“And now, reader, let us come into Mondisfield churchyard. There are three tombstones. On one is written, ‘Mr. Paul
Wharncliffe.’”
The story was no better than the productions of most eight-year-old children, the written story at least. But, curiously enough, it
proved to be the germ of the celebrated romance, ‘At Strife,’ which Derrick wrote in after years; and he himself maintains that his
picture of life during the Civil War would have been much less graphic had he not lived so much in the past during his various visits to
Mondisfield.
It was at his second visit, when we were nine, that I remember his announcing his intention of being an author when he was grown
up. My mother still delights in telling the story. She was sitting at work in the south parlour one day, when I dashed into the room
calling out:
“Derrick’s head is stuck between the banisters in the gallery; come quick, mother, come quick!”
She ran up the little winding staircase, and there, sure enough, in the musician’s gallery, was poor Derrick, his manuscript and pen
on the floor and his head in durance vile.
“You silly boy!” said my mother, a little frightened when she found that to get the head back was no easy matter, “What made you
put it through?”
“You look like King Charles at Carisbrooke,” I cried, forgetting how much Derrick would resent the speech.
And being released at that moment he took me by the shoulders and gave me an angry shake or two, as he said vehemently, “I’m
not like King Charles! King Charles was a liar.”
I saw my mother smile a little as she separated us.
“Come, boys, don’t quarrel,” she said. “And Derrick will tell me the truth, for indeed I am curious to know why he thrust his head in
such a place.”
“I wanted to make sure,” said Derrick, “whether Paul Wharncliffe could see Lady Lettice, when she took the falcon on her wrist
below in the passage. I mustn’t say he saw her if it’s impossible, you know. Authors have to be quite true in little things, and I mean to
be an author.”
“But,” said my mother, laughing at the great earnestness of the hazel eyes, “could not your hero look over the top of the rail?”
“Well, yes,” said Derrick. “He would have done that, but you see it’s so dreadfully high and I couldn’t get up. But I tell you what,
Mrs. Wharncliffe, if it wouldn’t be giving you a great deal of trouble—I’m sorry you were troubled to get my head back again—but if
you would just look over, since you are so tall, and I’ll run down and act Lady Lettice.”
“Why couldn’t Paul go downstairs and look at the lady in comfort?” asked my mother.
Derrick mused a little.
“He might look at her through a crack in the door at the foot of the stairs, perhaps, but that would seem mean, somehow. It would
be a pity, too, not to use the gallery; galleries are uncommon, you see, and you can get cracked doors anywhere. And, you know, he
was obliged to look at her when she couldn’t see him, because their fathers were on different sides in the war, and dreadful enemies.”
When school-days came, matters went on much in the same way; there was always an abominably scribbled tale stowed away in
Derrick’s desk, and he worked infinitely harder than I did, because there was always before him this determination to be an author and
to prepare himself for the life. But he wrote merely from love of it, and with no idea of publication until the beginning of our last year at
Oxford, when, having reached the ripe age of one-and-twenty, he determined to delay no longer, but to plunge boldly into his first
novel.
He was seldom able to get more than six or eight hours a week for it, because he was reading rather hard, so that the novel
progressed but slowly. Finally, to my astonishment, it came to a dead stand-still.
I have never made out exactly what was wrong with Derrick then, though I know that he passed through a terrible time of doubt and
despair. I spent part of the Long with him down at Ventnor, where his mother had been ordered for her health. She was devoted to
Derrick, and as far as I can understand, he was her chief comfort in life. Major Vaughan, the husband, had been out in India for years;
the only daughter was married to a rich manufacturer at Birmingham, who had a constitutional dislike to mothers-in-law, and as far as
possible eschewed their company; while Lawrence, Derrick’s twin brother, was for ever getting into scrapes, and was into the bargain
the most unblushingly selfish fellow I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
“Sydney,” said Mrs. Vaughan to me one afternoon when we were in the garden, “Derrick seems to me unlike himself, there is a
division between us which I never felt before. Can you tell me what is troubling him?”
She was not at all a good-looking woman, but she had a very sweet, wistful face, and I never looked at her sad eyes without feeling
ready to go through fire and water for her. I tried now to make light of Derrick’s depression.
“He is only going through what we all of us go through,” I said, assuming a cheerful tone. “He has suddenly discovered that life is a
great riddle, and that the things he has accepted in blind faith are, after all, not so sure.”
She sighed.
“Do all go through it?” she said thoughtfully. “And how many, I wonder, get beyond?”
“Few enough,” I replied moodily. Then, remembering my role,—“But Derrick will get through; he has a thousand things to help him
which others have not,—you, for instance. And then I fancy he has a sort of insight which most of us are without.”
“Possibly,” she said. “As for me, it is little that I can do for him. Perhaps you are right, and it is true that once in a life at any rate we
all have to go into the wilderness alone.”
That was the last summer I ever saw Derrick’s mother; she took a chill the following Christmas and died after a few days’ illness.
But I have always thought her death helped Derrick in a way that her life might have failed to do. For although he never, I fancy, quite
recovered from the blow, and to this day cannot speak of her without tears in his eyes, yet when he came back to Oxford he seemed
to have found the answer to the riddle, and though older, sadder and graver than before, had quite lost the restless dissatisfaction that
for some time had clouded his life. In a few months, moreover, I noticed a fresh sign that he was out of the wood. Coming into his
rooms one day I found him sitting in the cushioned window-seat, reading over and correcting some sheets of blue foolscap.
“At it again?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I mean to finish the first volume here. For the rest I must be in London.”
“Why?” I asked, a little curious as to this unknown art of novel-making.
“Because,” he replied, “one must be in the heart of things to understand how Lynwood was affected by them.”
“Lynwood! I believe you are always thinking of him!” (Lynwood was the hero of his novel.)
“Well, so I am nearly—so I must be, if the book is to be any good.”
“Read me what you have written,” I said, throwing myself back in a rickety but tolerably comfortable arm-chair which Derrick had
inherited with the rooms.
He hesitated a moment, being always very diffident about his own work; but presently, having provided me with a cigar and made a
good deal of unnecessary work in arranging the sheets of the manuscript, he began to read aloud, rather nervously, the opening
chapters of the book now so well known under the title of ‘Lynwood’s Heritage.’
I had heard nothing of his for the last four years, and was amazed at the gigantic stride he had made in the interval. For, spite of a
certain crudeness, it seemed to me a most powerful story; it rushed straight to the point with no wavering, no beating about the bush; it
flung itself into the problems of the day with a sort of sublime audacity; it took hold of one; it whirled one along with its own inherent
force, and drew forth both laughter and tears, for Derrick’s power of pathos had always been his strongest point.
All at once he stopped reading.
“Go on!” I cried impatiently.
“That is all,” he said, gathering the sheets together.
“You stopped in the middle of a sentence!” I cried in exasperation.
“Yes,” he said quietly, “for six months.”
“You provoking fellow! why, I wonder?”
“Because I didn’t know the end.”
“Good heavens! And do you know it now?”
He looked me full in the face, and there was an expression in his eyes which puzzled me.
“I believe I do,” he said; and, getting up, he crossed the room, put the manuscript away in a drawer, and returning, sat down in the
window-seat again, looking out on the narrow, paved street below, and at the grey buildings opposite.
I knew very well that he would never ask me what I thought of the story—that was not his way.
“Derrick!” I exclaimed, watching his impassive face, “I believe after all you are a genius.”
I hardly know why I said “after all,” but till that moment it had never struck me that Derrick was particularly gifted. He had so far
got through his Oxford career creditably, but then he had worked hard; his talents were not of a showy order. I had never expected
that he would set the Thames on fire. Even now it seemed to me that he was too dreamy, too quiet, too devoid of the pushing faculty
to succeed in the world.
My remark made him laugh incredulously.
“Define a genius,” he said.
For answer I pulled down his beloved Imperial Dictionary and read him the following quotation from De Quincey: ‘Genius is that
mode of intellectual power which moves in alliance with the genial nature, i.e., with the capacities of pleasure and pain; whereas talent
has no vestige of such an alliance, and is perfectly independent of all human sensibilities.’
“Let me think! You can certainly enjoy things a hundred times more than I can—and as for suffering, why you were always a great
hand at that. Now listen to the great Dr. Johnson and see if the cap fits, ‘The true genius is a mind of large general powers accidentally
determined in some particular direction.’
“‘Large general powers’!—yes, I believe after all you have them with, alas, poor Derrick! one notable exception—the mathematical
faculty. You were always bad at figures. We will stick to De Quincey’s definition, and for heaven’s sake, my dear fellow, do get
Lynwood out of that awful plight! No wonder you were depressed when you lived all this age with such a sentence unfinished!”
“For the matter of that,” said Derrick, “he can’t get out till the end of the book; but I can begin to go on with him now.”
“And when you leave Oxford?”
“Then I mean to settle down in London—to write leisurely—and possibly to read for the Bar.”
“We might be together,” I suggested. And Derrick took to this idea, being a man who detested solitude and crowds about equally.
Since his mother’s death he had been very much alone in the world. To Lawrence he was always loyal, but the two had nothing in
common, and though fond of his sister he could not get on at all with the manufacturer, his brother-in-law. But this prospect of life
together in London pleased him amazingly; he began to recover his spirits to a great extent and to look much more like himself.
It must have been just as he had taken his degree that he received a telegram to announce that Major Vaughan had been invalided
home, and would arrive at Southampton in three weeks’ time. Derrick knew very little of his father, but apparently Mrs. Vaughan had
done her best to keep up a sort of memory of his childish days at Aldershot, and in these the part that his father played was always
pleasant. So he looked forward to the meeting not a little, while I, from the first, had my doubts as to the felicity it was likely to bring
him.
However, it was ordained that before the Major’s ship arrived, his son’s whole life should change. Even Lynwood was thrust into
the background. As for me, I was nowhere. For Derrick, the quiet, the self-contained, had fallen passionately in love with a certain
Freda Merrifield.
Chapter II.
‘Infancy? What if the rose-streak of morning
Pale and depart in a passion of tears?
Once to have hoped is no matter for scorning:
Love once: e’en love’s disappointment endears;
A moment’s success pays the failure of years.’
R. Browning.
The wonder would have been if he had not fallen in love with her, for a more fascinating girl I never saw. She had only just returned
from school at Compiegne, and was not yet out; her charming freshness was unsullied; she had all the simplicity and
straightforwardness of unspoilt, unsophisticated girlhood. I well remember our first sight of her. We had been invited for a fortnight’s
yachting by Calverley of Exeter. His father, Sir John Calverley, had a sailing yacht, and some guests having disappointed him at the last
minute, he gave his son carte blanche as to who he should bring to fill the vacant berths.
So we three travelled down to Southampton together one hot summer day, and were rowed out to the Aurora, an uncommonly neat
little schooner which lay in that over-rated and frequently odoriferous roadstead, Southampton Water. However, I admit that on that
evening—the tide being high—the place looked remarkably pretty; the level rays of the setting sun turned the water to gold; a soft
luminous haze hung over the town and the shipping, and by a stretch of imagination one might have thought the view almost Venetian.
Derrick’s perfect content was only marred by his shyness. I knew that he dreaded reaching the Aurora; and sure enough, as we
stepped on to the exquisitely white deck and caught sight of the little group of guests, I saw him retreat into his crab-shell of silent
reserve. Sir John, who made a very pleasant host, introduced us to the other visitors—Lord Probyn and his wife and their niece, Miss
Freda Merrifield. Lady Probyn was Sir John’s sister, and also the sister of Miss Merrifield’s mother; so that it was almost a family
party, and by no means a formidable gathering. Lady Probyn played the part of hostess and chaperoned her pretty niece; but she was
not in the least like the aunt of fiction—on the contrary, she was comparatively young in years and almost comically young in mind; her
niece was devoted to her, and the moment I saw her I knew that our cruise could not possibly be dull.
As to Miss Freda, when we first caught sight of her she was standing near the companion, dressed in a daintily made yachting
costume of blue serge and white braid, and round her white sailor hat she wore the name of the yacht stamped on a white ribbon; in
her waist-band she had fastened two deep crimson roses, and she looked at us with frank, girlish curiosity, no doubt wondering
whether we should add to or detract from the enjoyment of the expedition. She was rather tall, and there was an air of strength and
energy about her which was most refreshing. Her skin was singularly white, but there was a healthy glow of colour in her cheeks; while
her large, grey eyes, shaded by long lashes, were full of life and brightness. As to her features, they were perhaps a trifle irregular, and
her elder sisters were supposed to eclipse her altogether; but to my mind she was far the most taking of the three.
I was not in the least surprised that Derrick should fall head over ears in love with her; she was exactly the sort of girl that would
infallibly attract him. Her absence of shyness; her straightforward, easy way of talking; her genuine goodheartedness; her devotion to
animals—one of his own pet hobbies—and finally her exquisite playing, made the result a foregone conclusion. And then, moreover,
they were perpetually together. He would hang over the piano in the saloon for hours while she played, the rest of us lazily enjoying the
easy chairs and the fresh air on deck; and whenever we landed, these two were sure in the end to be just a little apart from the rest of
us.
It was an eminently successful cruise. We all liked each other; the sea was calm, the sunshine constant, the wind as a rule
favourable, and I think I never in a single fortnight heard so many good stories, or had such a good time. We seemed to get right out of
the world and its narrow restrictions, away from all that was hollow and base and depressing, only landing now and then at quaint little
quiet places for some merry excursion on shore. Freda was in the highest spirits; and as to Derrick, he was a different creature. She
seemed to have the power of drawing him out in a marvellous degree, and she took the greatest interest in his work—a sure way to
every author’s heart.
But it was not till one day, when we landed at Tresco, that I felt certain she genuinely loved him—there in one glance the truth
flashed upon me. I was walking with one of the gardeners down one of the long shady paths of that lovely little island, with its curiously
foreign look, when we suddenly came face to face with Derrick and Freda. They were talking earnestly, and I could see her great grey
eyes as they were lifted to his—perhaps they were more expressive than she knew—I cannot say. They both started a little as we
confronted them, and the colour deepened in Freda’s face. The gardener, with what photographers usually ask for—‘just the faint
beginning of a smile,’—turned and gathered a bit of white heather growing near.
“They say it brings good luck, miss,” he remarked, handing it to Freda.
“Thank you,” she said, laughing, “I hope it will bring it to me. At any rate it will remind me of this beautiful island. Isn’t it just like
Paradise, Mr. Wharncliffe?”
“For me it is like Paradise before Eve was created,” I replied, rather wickedly. “By the bye, are you going to keep all the good luck
to yourself?”
“I don’t know,” she said laughing. “Perhaps I shall; but you have only to ask the gardener, he will gather you another piece directly.”
I took good care to drop behind, having no taste for the third-fiddle business; but I noticed when we were in the gig once more,
rowing back to the yacht, that the white heather had been equally divided—one half was in the waist-band of the blue serge dress, the
other half in the button-hole of Derrick’s blazer.
So the fortnight slipped by, and at length one afternoon we found ourselves once more in Southampton Water; then came the bustle
of packing and the hurry of departure, and the merry party dispersed. Derrick and I saw them all off at the station, for, as his father’s
ship did not arrive till the following day, I made up my mind to stay on with him at Southampton.
“You will come and see us in town,” said Lady Probyn, kindly. And Lord Probyn invited us both for the shooting at Blachington in
September. “We will have the same party on shore, and see if we can’t enjoy ourselves almost as well,” he said in his hearty way; “the
novel will go all the better for it, eh, Vaughan?”
Derrick brightened visibly at the suggestion. I heard him talking to Freda all the time that Sir John stood laughing and joking as to the
comparative pleasures of yachting and shooting.
“You will be there too?” Derrick asked.
“I can’t tell,” said Freda, and there was a shade of sadness in her tone. Her voice was deeper than most women’s voices—a rich
contralto with something striking and individual about it. I could hear her quite plainly; but Derrick spoke less distinctly—he always had
a bad trick of mumbling.
“You see I am the youngest,” she said, “and I am not really ‘out.’ Perhaps my mother will wish one of the elder ones to go; but I
half think they are already engaged for September, so after all I may have a chance.”
Inaudible remark from my friend.
“Yes, I came here because my sisters did not care to leave London till the end of the season,” replied the clear contralto. “It has
been a perfect cruise. I shall remember it all my life.”
After that, nothing more was audible; but I imagine Derrick must have hazarded a more personal question, and that Freda had
admitted that it was not only the actual sailing she should remember. At any rate her face when I caught sight of it again made me think
of the girl described in the ‘Biglow Papers’:
“‘’Twas kin’ o’ kingdom come to look
On sech a blessed creatur.
A dogrose blushin’ to a brook
Ain’t modester nor sweeter.’”
So the train went off, and Derrick and I were left to idle about Southampton and kill time as best we might. Derrick seemed to walk
the streets in a sort of dream—he was perfectly well aware that he had met his fate, and at that time no thought of difficulties in the way
had arisen either in his mind or in my own. We were both of us young and inexperienced; we were both of us in love, and we had the
usual lover’s notion that everything in heaven and earth is prepared to favour the course of his particular passion.
I remember that we soon found the town intolerable, and, crossing by the ferry, walked over to Netley Abbey, and lay down idly in
the shade of the old grey walls. Not a breath of wind stirred the great masses of ivy which were wreathed about the ruined church, and
the place looked so lovely in its decay, that we felt disposed to judge the dissolute monks very leniently for having behaved so badly
that their church and monastery had to be opened to the four winds of heaven. After all, when is a church so beautiful as when it has
the green grass for its floor and the sky for its roof?
I could show you the very spot near the East window where Derrick told me the whole truth, and where we talked over Freda’s
perfections and the probability of frequent meetings in London. He had listened so often and so patiently to my affairs, that it seemed
an odd reversal to have to play the confidant; and if now and then my thoughts wandered off to the coming month at Mondisfield, and
pictured violet eyes while he talked of grey, it was not from any lack of sympathy with my friend.
Derrick was not of a self-tormenting nature, and though I knew he was amazed at the thought that such a girl as Freda could
possibly care for him, yet he believed most implicitly that this wonderful thing had come to pass; and, remembering her face as we had
last seen it, and the look in her eyes at Tresco, I, too, had not a shadow of a doubt that she really loved him. She was not the least bit
of a flirt, and society had not had a chance yet of moulding her into the ordinary girl of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps it was the sudden and unexpected change of the next day that makes me remember Derrick’s face so distinctly as he lay
back on the smooth turf that afternoon in Netley Abbey. As it looked then, full of youth and hope, full of that dream of cloudless love, I
never saw it again.
Chapter III.
“Religion in him never died, but became a habit—a habit of
enduring hardness, and cleaving to the steadfast performance
of duty in the face of the strongest allurements to the
pleasanter and easier course.” Life of Charles Lamb, by A.
Ainger.
Derrick was in good spirits the next day. He talked much of Major Vaughan, wondered whether the voyage home had restored his
health, discussed the probable length of his leave, and speculated as to the nature of his illness; the telegram had of course given no
details.
“There has not been even a photograph for the last five years,” he remarked, as we walked down to the quay together. “Yet I think
I should know him anywhere, if it is only by his height. He used to look so well on horseback. I remember as a child seeing him in a
sham fight charging up Caesar’s Camp.”
“How old were you when he went out?”
“Oh, quite a small boy,” replied Derrick. “It was just before I first stayed with you. However, he has had a regular succession of
photographs sent out to him, and will know me easily enough.”
Poor Derrick! I can’t think of that day even now without a kind of mental shiver. We watched the great steamer as it glided up to
the quay, and Derrick scanned the crowded deck with eager eyes, but could nowhere see the tall, soldierly figure that had lingered so
long in his memory. He stood with his hand resting on the rail of the gangway, and when presently it was raised to the side of the
steamer, he still kept his position, so that he could instantly catch sight of his father as he passed down. I stood close behind him, and
watched the motley procession of passengers; most of them had the dull colourless skin which bespeaks long residence in India, and a
particularly yellow and peevish-looking old man was grumbling loudly as he slowly made his way down the gangway.
“The most disgraceful scene!” he remarked. “The fellow was as drunk as he could be.”
“Who was it?” asked his companion.
“Why, Major Vaughan, to be sure. The only wonder is that he hasn’t drunk himself to death by this time—been at it years enough!”
Derrick turned, as though to shelter himself from the curious eyes of the travellers; but everywhere the quay was crowded. It
seemed to me not unlike the life that lay before him, with this new shame which could not be hid, and I shall never forget the look of
misery in his face.
“Most likely a great exaggeration of that spiteful old fogey’s,” I said. “Never believe anything that you hear, is a sound axiom. Had
you not better try to get on board?”
“Yes; and for heaven’s sake come with me, Wharncliffe!” he said. “It can’t be true! It is, as you say, that man’s spite, or else there
is someone else of the name on board. That must be it—someone else of the name.”
I don’t know whether he managed to deceive himself. We made our way on board, and he spoke to one of the stewards, who
conducted us to the saloon. I knew from the expression of the man’s face that the words we had overheard were but too true; it was a
mere glance that he gave us, yet if he had said aloud, “They belong to that old drunkard! Thank heaven I’m not in their shoes!” I could
not have better understood what was in his mind.
There were three persons only in the great saloon: an officer’s servant, whose appearance did not please me; a fine looking old man
with grey hair and whiskers, and a rough-hewn honest face, apparently the ship’s doctor; and a tall grizzled man in whom I at once
saw a sort of horrible likeness to Derrick—horrible because this face was wicked and degraded, and because its owner was drunk—
noisily drunk. Derrick paused for a minute, looking at his father; then, deadly pale, he turned to the old doctor. “I am Major Vaughan’s
son,” he said.
The doctor grasped his hand, and there was something in the old man’s kindly, chivalrous manner which brought a sort of light into
the gloom.
“I am very glad to see you!” he exclaimed. “Is the Major’s luggage ready?” he inquired turning to the servant. Then, as the man
replied in the affirmative, “How would it be, Mr. Vaughan, if your father’s man just saw the things into a cab? and then I’ll come on
shore with you and see my patient safely settled in.”
Derrick acquiesced, and the doctor turned to the Major, who was leaning up against one of the pillars of the saloon and shouting out
“‘Twas in Trafalgar Bay,” in a way which, under other circumstances, would have been highly comic. The doctor interrupted him, as
with much feeling he sang how:
“England declared that every man
That day had done his duty.”
“Look, Major,” he said; “here is your son come to meet you.”
“Glad to see you, my boy,” said the Major, reeling forward and running all his words together. “How’s your mother? Is this
Lawrence? Glad to see both of you! Why, you’r’s like’s two peas! Not Lawrence, do you say? Confound it, doctor, how the ship
rolls to-day!”
And the old wretch staggered and would have fallen, had not Derrick supported him and landed him safely on one of the fixed
ottomans.
“Yes, yes, you’re the son for me,” he went on, with a bland smile, which made his face all the more hideous. “You’re not so rough
and clumsy as that confounded John Thomas, whose hands are like brickbats. I’m a mere wreck, as you see; it’s the accursed climate!
But your mother will soon nurse me into health again; she was always a good nurse, poor soul! it was her best point. What with you
and your mother, I shall soon be myself again.”
Here the doctor interposed, and Derrick made desperately for a porthole and gulped down mouthfuls of fresh air: but he was not
allowed much of a respite, for the servant returned to say that he had procured a cab, and the Major called loudly for his son’s arm.
“I’ll not have you,” he said, pushing the servant violently away. “Come, Derrick, help me! you are worth two of that blockhead.”
And Derrick came quickly forward, his face still very pale, but with a dignity about it which I had never before seen; and, giving his
arm to his drunken father, he piloted him across the saloon, through the staring ranks of stewards, officials, and tardy passengers
outside, down the gangway, and over the crowded quay to the cab. I knew that each derisive glance of the spectators was to him like
a sword-thrust, and longed to throttle the Major, who seemed to enjoy himself amazingly on terra firma, and sang at the top of his
voice as we drove through the streets of Southampton. The old doctor kept up a cheery flow of small-talk with me, thinking, no doubt,
that this would be a kindness to Derrick: and at last that purgatorial drive ended, and somehow Derrick and the doctor between them
got the Major safely into his room at Radley’s Hotel.
We had ordered lunch in a private sitting-room, thinking that the Major would prefer it to the coffee-room; but, as it turned out, he
was in no state to appear. They left him asleep, and the ship’s doctor sat in the seat that had been prepared for his patient, and made
the meal as tolerable to us both as it could be. He was an odd, old-fashioned fellow, but as true a gentleman as ever breathed.
“Now,” he said, when lunch was over, “you and I must have a talk together, Mr. Vaughan, and I will help you to understand your
father’s case.”
I made a movement to go, but sat down again at Derrick’s request. I think, poor old fellow, he dreaded being alone, and knowing
that I had seen his father at the worst, thought I might as well hear all particulars.
“Major Vaughan,” continued the doctor, “has now been under my care for some weeks, and I had some communication with the
regimental surgeon about his case before he sailed. He is suffering from an enlarged liver, and the disease has been brought on by his
unfortunate habit of over-indulgence in stimulants.” I could almost have smiled, so very gently and considerately did the good old man
veil in long words the shameful fact. “It is a habit sadly prevalent among our fellow-countrymen in India; the climate aggravates the
mischief, and very many lives are in this way ruined. Then your father was also unfortunate enough to contract rheumatism when he
was camping out in the jungle last year, and this is increasing on him very much, so that his life is almost intolerable to him, and he
naturally flies for relief to his greatest enemy, drink. At all costs, however, you must keep him from stimulants; they will only intensify
the disease and the sufferings, in fact they are poison to a man in such a state. Don’t think I am a bigot in these matters; but I say that
for a man in such a condition as this, there is nothing for it but total abstinence, and at all costs your father must be guarded from the
possibility of procuring any sort of intoxicating drink. Throughout the voyage I have done my best to shield him, but it was a difficult
matter. His servant, too, is not trustworthy, and should be dismissed if possible.”
“Had he spoken at all of his plans?” asked Derrick, and his voice sounded strangely unlike itself.
“He asked me what place in England he had better settle down in,” said the doctor, “and I strongly recommended him to try Bath.
This seemed to please him, and if he is well enough he had better go there to-morrow. He mentioned your mother this morning; no
doubt she will know how to manage him.”
“My mother died six months ago,” said Derrick, pushing back his chair and beginning to pace the room. The doctor made kindly
apologies.
“Perhaps you have a sister, who could go to him?”
“No,” replied Derrick. “My only sister is married, and her husband would never allow it.”
“Or a cousin or an aunt?” suggested the old man, naively unconscious that the words sounded like a quotation.
I saw the ghost of a smile flit over Derrick’s harassed face as he shook his head.
“I suggested that he should go into some Home for—cases of the kind,” resumed the doctor, “or place himself under the charge of
some medical man; however, he won’t hear of such a thing. But if he is left to himself—well, it is all up with him. He will drink himself
to death in a few months.”
“He shall not be left alone,” said Derrick; “I will live with him. Do you think I should do? It seems to be Hobson’s choice.”
I looked up in amazement—for here was Derrick calmly giving himself up to a life that must crush every plan for the future he had
made. Did men make such a choice as that while they took two or three turns in a room? Did they speak so composedly after a
struggle that must have been so bitter? Thinking it over now, I feel sure it was his extraordinary gift of insight and his clear judgment
which made him behave in this way. He instantly perceived and promptly acted; the worst of the suffering came long after.
“Why, of course you are the very best person in the world for him,” said the doctor. “He has taken a fancy to you, and evidently
you have a certain influence with him. If any one can save him it will be you.”
But the thought of allowing Derrick to be sacrificed to that old brute of a Major was more than I could bear calmly.
“A more mad scheme was never proposed,” I cried. “Why, doctor, it will be utter ruin to my friend’s career; he will lose years that
no one can ever make up. And besides, he is unfit for such a strain, he will never stand it.”
My heart felt hot as I thought of Derrick, with his highly-strung, sensitive nature, his refinement, his gentleness, in constant
companionship with such a man as Major Vaughan.
“My dear sir,” said the old doctor, with a gleam in his eye, “I understand your feeling well enough. But depend upon it, your friend
has made the right choice, and there is no doubt that he’ll be strong enough to do his duty.”
The word reminded me of the Major’s song, and my voice was abominably sarcastic in tone as I said to Derrick, “You no longer
consider writing your duty then?”
“Yes,” he said, “but it must stand second to this. Don’t be vexed, Sydney; our plans are knocked on the head, but it is not so bad
as you make out. I have at any rate enough to live on, and can afford to wait.”
There was no more to be said, and the next day I saw that strange trio set out on their road to Bath. The Major looking more
wicked when sober than he had done when drunk; the old doctor kindly and considerate as ever; and Derrick, with an air of resolution
about that English face of his and a dauntless expression in his eyes which impressed me curiously.
These quiet, reserved fellows are always giving one odd surprises. He had astonished me by the vigour and depth of the first volume
of ‘Lynwood’s Heritage.’ He astonished me now by a new phase in his own character. Apparently he who had always been content to
follow where I led, and to watch life rather than to take an active share in it, now intended to strike out a very decided line of his own.
Chapter IV.
“Both Goethe and Schiller were profoundly convinced that Art
was no luxury of leisure, no mere amusement to charm the
idle, or relax the careworn; but a mighty influence, serious
in its aims although pleasureable in its means; a sister of
Religion, by whose aid the great world-scheme was wrought
into reality.” Lewes’s Life of Goethe.
Man is a selfish being, and I am a particularly fine specimen of the race as far as that characteristic goes. If I had had a dozen
drunken parents I should never have danced attendance on one of them; yet in my secret soul I admired Derrick for the line he had
taken, for we mostly do admire what is unlike ourselves and really noble, though it is the fashion to seem totally indifferent to everything
in heaven and earth. But all the same I felt annoyed about the whole business, and was glad to forget it in my own affairs at
Mondisfield.
Weeks passed by. I lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, and a hard awaking. That, however, has nothing to do with
Derrick’s story, and may be passed over. In October I settled down in Montague Street, Bloomsbury, and began to read for the Bar,
in about as disagreeable a frame of mind as can be conceived. One morning I found on my breakfast table a letter in Derrick’s
handwriting. Like most men, we hardly ever corresponded—what women say in the eternal letters they send to each other I can’t
conceive—but it struck me that under the circumstances I ought to have sent him a line to ask how he was getting on, and my
conscience pricked me as I remembered that I had hardly thought of him since we parted, being absorbed in my own matters. The
letter was not very long, but when one read between the lines it somehow told a good deal. I have it lying by me, and this is a copy of
it:
“Dear Sydney,—Do like a good fellow go to North Audley Street for me, to the house which I described to you as the one where
Lynwood lodged, and tell me what he would see besides the church from his window—if shops, what kind? Also if any glimpse of
Oxford Street would be visible. Then if you’ll add to your favours by getting me a second-hand copy of Laveleye’s ‘Socialisme
Contemporain,’ I should be for ever grateful. We are settled in here all right. Bath is empty, but I people it as far as I can with the folk
out of ‘Evelina’ and ‘Persuasion.’ How did you get on at Blachington? and which of the Misses Merrifield went in the end? Don’t
bother about the commissions. Any time will do.
“Ever yours,
“Derrick Vaughan.”
Poor old fellow! all the spirit seemed knocked out of him. There was not one word about the Major, and who could say what
wretchedness was veiled in that curt phrase, “we are settled in all right”? All right! it was all as wrong as it could be! My blood began
to boil at the thought of Derrick, with his great powers—his wonderful gift—cooped up in a place where the study of life was so
limited and so dull. Then there was his hunger for news of Freda, and his silence as to what had kept him away from Blachington, and
about all a sort of proud humility which prevented him from saying much that I should have expected him to say under the
circumstances.
It was Saturday, and my time was my own. I went out, got his book for him; interviewed North Audley Street; spent a bad five
minutes in company with that villain ‘Bradshaw,’ who is responsible for so much of the brain and eye disease of the nineteenth century,
and finally left Paddington in the Flying Dutchman, which landed me at Bath early in the afternoon. I left my portmanteau at the station,
and walked through the city till I reached Gay Street. Like most of the streets of Bath, it was broad, and had on either hand dull, well-
built, dark grey, eminently respectable, unutterably dreary-looking houses. I rang, and the door was opened to me by a most quaint
old woman, evidently the landlady. An odour of curry pervaded the passage, and became more oppressive as the door of the sitting-
room was opened, and I was ushered in upon the Major and his son, who had just finished lunch.
“Hullo!” cried Derrick, springing up, his face full of delight which touched me, while at the same time it filled me with envy.
Even the Major thought fit to give me a hearty welcome.
“Glad to see you again,” he said pleasantly enough. “It’s a relief to have a fresh face to look at. We have a room which is quite at
your disposal, and I hope you’ll stay with us. Brought your portmanteau, eh?”
“It is at the station,” I replied.
“See that it is sent for,” he said to Derrick; “and show Mr. Wharncliffe all that is to be seen in this cursed hole of a place.” Then,
turning again to me, “Have you lunched? Very well, then, don’t waste this fine afternoon in an invalid’s room, but be off and enjoy
yourself.”
So cordial was the old man, that I should have thought him already a reformed character, had I not found that he kept the rough side
of his tongue for home use. Derrick placed a novel and a small handbell within his reach, and we were just going, when we were
checked by a volley of oaths from the Major; then a book came flying across the room, well aimed at Derrick’s head. He stepped
aside, and let it fall with a crash on the sideboard.
“What do you mean by giving me the second volume when you know I am in the third?” fumed the invalid.
He apologised quietly, fetched the third volume, straightened the disordered leaves of the discarded second, and with the air of one
well accustomed to such little domestic scenes, took up his hat and came out with me.
“How long do you intend to go on playing David to the Major’s Saul?” I asked, marvelling at the way in which he endured the
humours of his father.
“As long as I have the chance,” he replied. “I say, are you sure you won’t mind staying with us? It can’t be a very comfortable
household for an outsider.”
“Much better than for an insider, to all appearance,” I replied. “I’m only too delighted to stay. And now, old fellow, tell me the
honest truth—you didn’t, you know, in your letter—how have you been getting on?”
Derrick launched into an account of his father’s ailments.
“Oh, hang the Major! I don’t care about him, I want to know about you,” I cried.
“About me?” said Derrick doubtfully. “Oh, I’m right enough.”
“What do you do with yourself? How on earth do you kill time?” I asked. “Come, give me a full, true, and particular account of it
all.”
“We have tried three other servants,” said Derrick; “but the plan doesn’t answer. They either won’t stand it, or else they are bribed
into smuggling brandy into the house. I find I can do most things for my father, and in the morning he has an attendant from the hospital
who is trustworthy, and who does what is necessary for him. At ten we breakfast together, then there are the morning papers, which
he likes to have read to him. After that I go round to the Pump Room with him—odd contrast now to what it must have been when
Bath was the rage. Then we have lunch. In the aftern...
